


A Little Less Empty

by revise_leviathan



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Fluff, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 01:43:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revise_leviathan/pseuds/revise_leviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rei aquires some stray kittens, and Yuma has certain specific ideas on what is and isn't a home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Less Empty

**Author's Note:**

> This was written rather early in the morning when I needed to practice writing these two. Also posted to [my Tumblr](http://revise-leviathan.tumblr.com/post/39208283492/fic-a-little-less-empty).

“Aw man, everyone left without me again! What is it with them? I can barely get a good duel in after school these days.”

The sun was slowly setting, and Rei and Yuma were walking side-by-side back towards Yuma’s house – that was where they parted, and though Yuma knew Rei lived somewhere beyond, he’d never really asked where or how far. However far it was, Rei seemed content to walk it himself; in fact, just as content as he was now, listening to Yuma’s complaints as they made their way down the riverside path.

“Think positive. I can still be your opponent!” Rei replied, and then tapped his nose. “I have a counter for Excalibur this time, just wait.”

“Well, I’ll just have to win with something else then!”

Rei had opened his mouth to respond when there was a loud hiss and two cats – one grey and white, one brown and white with tabby stripes, both with amber eyes – streaked across the path, stopping to eye warily the bush from which they’d emerged. There was a loud rustling, and a large dog poked its nose out of the bush, sniffing madly and wagging its tail. Finally noticing the cats, it bounded forward, but there was a loud, stern yell from the other direction; the dog’s ears pricked, and it reluctantly ran back the way it had come. The two cats, satisfied that the immediate threat had disappeared, but still slightly wary, wound themselves around Rei’s legs as he crouched down to offer them his hand. As they bumped their heads against it, Rei frowned.

“I recognise you,” he said to the brown and white cat, rubbing its ears. “You were the one that gave Rio such a scare the other day.”

Yuma rubbed his chin, as if trying to remember something, then pointed dramatically at the other cat. “And _you’re_ the one I tripped over last week!”

Rei’s frown deepened; Yuma couldn’t recall seeing him look this thoughtful. “So they don’t have a home?”

Yuma shook his head. “There’s a lot of strays around the city. My big sis did a story on them once; apparently most of them stay away from people.”

“But these two obviously don’t,” Rei said, reaching under the grey one’s belly experimentally. When it didn’t react, he picked it up carefully, wincing when he felt how light it was; it wriggled a little, but didn’t bite or claw. Placing it down again, he reached for the other one; this one was more wary of the hands, but eventually allowed Rei to pick it up too. It wasn’t much heavier than the other one, and its skin was quite loose, as if it had lost a lot of weight in a short time. Rei’s thoughtful frown vanished, to be replaced by a warm smile.

“In that case, meaning well, I’ll give you a home.”

Yuma scooped up the other cat, looking confused. “D’you think your parents will be fine with you just walking in with two cats?”

Rei blinked at him, as if this was a foreign concept. “I don’t think it will be a problem.”

Yuma  frowned slightly at this; surely most households had rules about this sort of thing? “If you say so.”

“Ah…I can carry them both,” Rei said hurriedly, only just noticing the other cat in Yuma’s arms. “You can go home, it’s fine with me.”

“C’mon, let me give you a hand!” Yuma said, walking past Rei and further down the road back home. It wasn’t until he’d put several metres between them that Rei snapped out of his odd, thoughtful reverie.

“Wait for me, Yuma!” he called, jogging to catch up. Yuma huffed slightly.

“You’re acting odd. What happened to ‘think positive’?” he asked.

Rei looked almost embarrassed, like Yuma had spied some deep secret hidden behind his usual façade. “It’s…nothing. I was just thinking.”

“Well, think about something else then! How about that so-called ‘counter’, huh?”

The conversation that quickly turned into a discussion over pros and cons of certain cards, and by the time they passed the Tsukumo household, Rei was smiling and laughing again. Yuma was slightly relieved; it was odd seeing the other boy so quiet and melancholy.

“So, how far past here do you live?” Yuma asked, looking around at the familiar houses and wondering if any of them were Rei’s. “I’ve been wondering for a while.”

“Oh, not too far,” Rei replied, tipping a hand. “I haven’t been here long, though, so I sometimes have a bit of trouble remembering where the place is if I go a different route.”

“Where did you live before?”

Rei’s smile widened slightly, and a note of nostalgia crept into his tone. “A place really far away. It was always beautiful to look at, no matter what the season…there was an…ah…accident, though, and a lot of it was destroyed. My guardians were worried, so they sent me away to here.”

“Your guardians? Not your parents?” Yuma asked, slightly hesitantly. After all, he knew how it felt to be without parents; he hadn’t realised that Rei might have undergone the same experience.

Rei tipped his head with an unconvincing uncaring air. “I’ve never really known my parents. As long as I can remember, it’s just been me and the people assigned to look after me. Family and friends are sort of new concepts.”

Well, that explained why he’d been so…eager on first meeting him, Yuma thought. The fact that he’d given someone previously friendless their first experience of friendship, however, made him feel quite pleased with himself. He grinned widely. “How do you like the experience?”

Rei gave a bright smile. “I really love it. It’s a nice change to be surrounded by people my age…more like me, you know? People who…”

He trailed off, suddenly quiet and brooding again. Yuma thumped his back, making him jump slightly and almost drop the cat in his arms.

“Come on, you can tell me,” he said reassuringly.

Rei opened his mouth, closed it, took a deep breath and tried again. “People who…actually care about me. My guardians do their job and take care of me when they have to, and I really appreciate it, but…I don’t know. They always feel distant; like taking care of me is an obligation and not a choice.”

He laughed lightly and slightly awkwardly. “I probably shouldn’t be loading all this on you when you offered to give me a hand with these two. Sorry about that; my intentions were good.”

Yuma shook his head firmly. “I was the one who asked. And…well, my parents are…gone too. I’ll find them someday, but for now it’s just me, big sis, grandma, and Obomi in the house.”

Rei looked entirely surprised by this revelation, purple eyes widening. “Really? I never…ah, I’m sorry.”

Yuma gave an exaggerated shrug. “I guess I’m used to it now. And lingering on the past has never been my way to live. You’ve got to keep moving forward! _Kattobingu da ze!_ Right, Shingetsu?”

Rei nodded earnestly. “Right! I’ll keep that in mind!”

The houses they were passing had moved from average to higher-class; not quite mansions like Cathy’s, but larger and more modern than Yuma’s own home. He was about to comment on this when Rei nudged him. “We’re here.”

They had stopped in front of an odd, rounded sort of house. The outside shone like glass, and there were about three floors, all of which had odd, extra rooms sticking out seemingly randomly, each like their own little bubble. Yuma did a double-take, and Rei laughed.

“It’s meant to remind me of home,” he explained, opening the gate into the neatly tended garden.

_Home must be a strange place,_ Yuma thought, following him through. The garden was almost an unnatural shade of green; bright and somewhat garish, as was the blue of the flowers growing. The colour reminded him of Astral – Yuma would have shown him, but as was happening more and more often these days, he had spent the entire day inside the Emperor’s Key and didn’t look like he was coming out any time soon.

The front door had no lock; instead, Rei brushed his fingers gently against a panel placed where a doorknob would usually be, and the door slid open. Lights came on as they stepped in, and Yuma felt distinctly out of place in the futuristic home as the door slit shut behind him.

Rei smiled awkwardly, looking almost as uncomfortable as Yuma felt. “The people who built this place tried to make it feel like there was someone else waiting for you at home. There used to be a voice, too, but I told them it was really creepy, so they took it out.”

“So…you live by yourself?” Yuma asked. He’d received sympathy for his own family situation, but felt like Rei deserved just as much. What kind of guardian left someone to live alone at thirteen?

“Well, not now,” he replied, placing the tabby on the ground and watching it wander and sniff the furniture. Yuma put down the cat he’d been carrying as well, and it meandered off into the depths of the house to explore. All this space for one person didn’t quite feel right to him; it made the house feel even emptier. Rei, however, slid his shoes off at the door and dropped his bag next to him; this was simply routine, and it was clear he was entirely used to the isolation and emptiness of the house.

“Did you want something to eat?” Rei asked, clearly somewhat wrong-footed on the front of having guests and just going with the basics. Yuma, who had been distracted by the specifically shaped furnishings that fitted just right into certain parts of the room, nodded.

“My family’s used to me being out; it’ll be fine if I don’t come back until later.”

Rei smiled broadly. “That’s fine by me. This is the first time I’ve had anyone visit.”

Yuma blinked; it still hadn’t quite clicked that Rei had only arrived in the city recently. “You’ve got enough space to fit a hundred people in here, though!” He folded his arms, tapping his finger against one in a thoughtful way, and then announced, “You should have a sleepover here!”

Rei looked taken aback. “Ah…is that when friends stay at your house for the night?”

However surprised Rei had looked, Yuma’s reaction to this statement doubled it. “What? You’ve never had one before? Well, that’s all the more reason to do it!”

Rei’s surprised look melted away, and he laughed. “Maybe another time. You’ll have to help me choose who to invite!”

He walked through the room, beckoning Yuma to follow, and started up a narrow set of stairs that turned sharply in the middle, leading to the next floor.  They stepped out into a brightly lit, tiled room, stocked with every cooking appliance known to mankind and several that Yuma was sure weren’t known, with a long dining table on a polished, glassy floor visible beyond the door. This made Yuma’s heart sink again; it was as if the table was there to remind them both how lonely the house was for the one who lived there. Rei tapped Yuma’s back; a weaker attempt at the thump Yuma had cheered him with earlier. “I’m used to it, really.”

As if to prove this, he opened the overlarge cupboard, which was as well-stocked as its size would suggest, and craned his neck to see what was up the top and pushed to the back. “Anything in particular you’re interested in eating?”

“Do you have rice balls?”

Rei closed the cupboard and opened the fridge, ducking his head in. “Apparently, yes. Catch!”

He tossed one over the fridge door, Yuma only catching it by the tips of his fingers. Rei took a long drink from a bottle of something brightly coloured and fizzy before closing the fridge, and then beckoned Yuma to follow him again, this time through the long dining room and up another narrow set of stairs. The room they emerged into at the top of this staircase was a somewhat messy area that looked more lived-in than the rest of the house combined, and was illuminated with an odd bluish light. There was a couch with both cushions halfway to falling onto the floor, at which the cats were now clawing for lack of a better scratching post, a wardrobe with one door hanging open and a pant leg coming out of it, a desk with paint splattered across it and papers stacked up haphazardly, and a bed whose sheets had all migrated to the bottom of it or the floor, among other things. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was Rei’s bedroom. Yuma whistled appreciatively.

“Now this is more like a home should be.”

“Well, this is where I spend most of my time,” Rei pointed out, leaning over the bed to riffle through a draw which was part of the headboard. “I don’t think I’ve even eaten in the dining room. Everything comes back to here.”

Well, a home was a home, even if it was only one room. The atmosphere was more inviting than any other part of the house, and the room itself was large enough to sustain several dozen people – there was even a door leading to what looked like a bathroom at one end. This room and its signs of being lived in, more than anything, helped reassure Yuma that perhaps Rei’s life by himself wasn’t as lonely as he’d assumed. He even noticed that all the pent-up tension from earlier in the afternoon had melted away from Rei; he no longer had any sign of that thoughtful sadness from earlier. Instead, he looked entirely happy and at home, in his element. Maybe he’d been concerned to show Yuma the rest of this empty place; known what the reaction would be. Now that it had passed…

Yuma didn’t register Rei waving his deck in front of his face until he actually tapped him sharply on the nose with it.

“Agh, what…oh!” Yuma managed, rubbing his nose slightly.

“I did promise you a duel, with the best intention.”

“Alright then!” Yuma replied, tapping his own deck box. There was a clear space in the middle of the room, more than large enough to use, but Yuma had to admit he had a few concerns about duelling with full AR in someone’s room. “But what if we break something- is that a _telescope_?”

Sure enough, in the corner next to the window sat a large silver telescope, legs folded. On the small stool next to it there was a set of binoculars. Rei laughed, as if having a telescope in your room was a totally normal thing where he came from.

“What can I say, I like to see the stars. And before you ask about the binoculars, they’re for checking out things that happen around the city. I don’t hear much about what’s going on.”

Yuma walked to the window and grabbed the binoculars, gazing through them and out the window curiously. He let out an awed gasp as he looked from side to side, taking in the city; the Heartland Tower was closer to this place than he’d thought. His gaze eventually fell on a strangely shaped building with several floors; a lower, wide area and a thinner tower emerging from curved petal-like shapes, with windows circling it at intervals, topped by an oddly-shaped, curving roof. He’d never seen it this close before; it was almost a constant object in the distance, though.

“I wonder who lives in that?” he said vaguely. Rei seemed to guess which building he was referring to, and gave a small snort of laughter.

“You’d be surprised.”

“What do you-?”

He cut off as a door below the curved roof opened, and a blue-haired figure that he couldn’t quite see clearly, but nonetheless recognised, emerged into the evening light. Yuma’s mouth fell open almost comically.

“Wha- _Haruto?_   Then that must be where Kaito lives!” His mind caught up shortly after that. “But how do you know Kaito?”

Rei gave another confused blink, as if the answer was obvious. “Well, how did I know you?”

“From the WDC, of course – oh, so you saw more than just the last duel?”

“I saw the whole final – or as much of it actually got shown on television afterward. There were a lot of cuts and missed sections of duels. I did see Ryoga and Kaito and Tron, though.”

Yuma’s gaze rested on the building a little longer; he hadn’t expected his secretive, determined rival to have such a garish home, but the temptation of an evening duel became too much, and he turned back to Rei, dropping the binoculars and pulling out his deck.

“Enough of that! Are we going to duel or what?”

“Ready when you are, Yuma!”

“Duel disk, set! D-gazer, set!”

_“AR vision: link established.”_

“Duel!”


End file.
